It’s simple to suggest eat less, exercise more and you’ll lose fat. Unfortunately this advice does not explain why your friend can indulge in pizza and beer and stay shredded all summer while others need to put a microscope under every food that enters their mouth.

As you know, not all metabolisms are created equal and research has proven that some of us can burn fat faster than others. If you feel like you’re doing everything right but still unable so shed those last few pounds then let one of the following advanced fat burning tips and tricks below work for you.

Competing in front of hundreds of people at the CHIN Picnic in 2008. I placed 2nd of 22 guys.

Here are 23 of the exact secrets I used to cut 23-pounds of fat in 10-weeks that lead to the photos on this page. Getting shredded can not be left to chance with the mentality that you hope it works. In order to shake the last few pounds of fat you must combine as many of these techniques as possible so that you experience a huge difference in the mirror.

1. Follow a specific, pre-set nutrition plan so that you know exactly what you’re supposed to eat and what times and in what amounts. You will be less likely to cheat and more likely to follow your plan. Print it out and post it on your refrigerator.

2. Read labels because you must be precise about your food intake and ensure your food plan matches exactly with what you’re consuming or how in the world can you help yourself?

3. Get your body fat measured and plan to lose 1% of it each week.

4. Tweak, re-evaluate and re-tweak. If you’re not losing, tweak ONE variable for the following week while keeping everything else standardized. Re-evaluate your progress and continue this feed back loop each week.

5. When tweaking a variable in your training, make small changes instead of big ones. For example, add one extra 45-minute cardio session next week if you plateaued, not 3 extra cardio sessions. If you’re doing 2 interval workouts, add a third.

6. Did I say small changes are responsible for big changes? If you’re eating 2 slices of whole wheat bread on meal one, drop it to only 1 slice instead. Dramatic nutrition or cardio changes is unnecessary.

7. Plan to raise your caloric intake one time every five days, minimum.

8. Start doing interval training and build up to at least three 20-minute workouts at 85% intensity.

9. For interval training, rely on the classic and effective 1-minute hard followed by 1-minute easy protocl for a total of 10 intervals.

10. Incorporate steady-state cardio on a empty stomach before breakfast. If you’re on a ultra low-carb diet then this is not necessary however “regular” cardio in a fasted state can help your body to resort to using more fat for fuel.

The top 3 guys holding up Miss. Chin Bikini.

11. Drink a big black cup of coffee or have an espresso before you do fasted cardio before breakfast.

12. Incorporate muscle-saving supplements like creatine and branch chain amino acids with a liter of water before you do your cardio in a fasted state in the morning.

13. If possible, perform your weights in the evening and perform your cardio in the morning. This requires more dedication but can be very effective in the final 4-weeks before your “deadline.”

14. Train hard with weights and train often. Be prepared to move from 3-days or 4-days of weight training to at least 5-days of weight training a week.

15. During fat loss, the details of the workout are not as important as muscle building. Focus on intensity and finishing the workout knowing you held nothing back.

16. Keep rest periods between 30-60 seconds.

17. Don’t worry on the length of your workouts, even if they last up to 1.5 hours.

18. Don’t plant to eat perfectly without any unplanned cheat.

19. Eat as many fibrous vegetables as possible like broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and/or asparagus to name a few.

20. Eat your first meal earlier than you are currently eating it now. Having your first meal around 6 am and your last meal around 6 pm works the best for the majority of people.

I just want to tell you that I’m new to blogs and definitely savored your web-site. Most likely I’m planning to bookmark your site . You really have outstanding stories. Appreciate it for sharing with us your website page.

Lets say I’m 12 weeks out from a show. From weeks 12-6 I might do liquid nutrition but the ration of carbs to protein would be 1:1. Then 0.5:1 and then with 6 weeks to go, 0.25:1 and then on the last 4 weeks it would be just whole food. No liquid nutrition. No shakes at all. Don’t worry about my numbers, grasp the main principle of cutting carbs to decrease insulin spikes and focus on as much thermogenesis as possible from whole food to elevate metabolism.

I completely agree with doing cardio on an empty stomach when you are trying to lose those last 4-5 pounds. Andrew was asking about your course recommending to avoid doing cardio on an empty stomach and that this was conflicting advice.

What I have found is that you can get pretty lean without doing cardio in a slightly fasted state, but to get an extra-lean “vacation ready” body…going into cardio in a fasted state gives you that extra edge.

Black Coffee “old school” style (brewed and nothing in it) is the way I like to get energized when you go in your workouts carbed-down or fasted. Glad you put that tip up there as well!

Hi Vince I’m 20 years old and my weight was 98.6 kilograms now it is 88.3 kg. I’ve lost over 10 kilograms after I put down my meds, that I had to use due to my manic incident. I basicly change’d my diet a little bit, exchanging my normal bread for dry bread that has only 20 calories per slice. I drank red tea, and exercise a bit. And there you go, 10 kilos out. Now I’m using your free anerobic programs every day, one program one day, second program another day, doing interwals in one day, and this nine minute cardio in another. My first question is: Can I do interval training every day or more and if it’s not harmfull for my heart? Secondly I must admit that I don’t count my calories I do eat 5 meals a day, and they are pretty small I guess. My meals contain a lot of fiber, proteins. I also cut of my sugars, exept my muesli meal on breakfast. Is it realy nececary to have a meal plan totaly planed? If you would like to see my progress on pictures let me know!

Vince said…”Alberto and Glenn – I recommend cardio on a empty stomach, many would disagree. I recommend it because it works for me every time. If you try this and you find that you are losing your muscle mass, your body gets the final say and have a meal prior or do it at another time.”

In your No-Nonsense muscle building pdf you say NOT to do Cardio on an empty stomach as it will consume muscle cells. Which is it?

I do realize you added the caveat that if you are losing muscle while doing cardio in the am on an empty stomach you should probably eat something and consume protein/creatine, but its very conflicting.

dude, i feel so freakin great that i stumbled upon ur website. it’s like this, i’m not ultra skinny but skinny . i wold love to have a killer body like urs so i can get the ckicks too. there is a problem though i stay in Nigeria and can’t get my hands on ur dvd’s, i wish i cold so can get really started, though i have in a way. wat should i do. please tell me. by the way u have the best body i’ve ever seen.

Hey Vince I bought your e-book – No Nonsense Muscle Building and have read over it and everything looks good.

Just a few questions thought: 1) I am a vegetarian…do you think that I should still follow the same diet plan? What types of foods should I eat to gain enough protein (is soy ok?). Do you think I can build muscle being a vegetarian?

2) I am 172lbs, 5″11 with 23.3% body fat…do you think I need to bring down my BF to a certain number before starting your high calorie nutrition plans, because I don’t really want to go higher in BF%..

Cool tips indeed but i’ll like to say the nutrition part of it is somehow weird to me coz where live, thz food stuff locally eaten here do not seem to appear in any of your dietary plans (or the names seem not to be the same) so I can’t give it a try. that’s the same thing i said to Mike Geary in an e-mail but who knows, will he ever read that? There so many people around here who would like to try out your tips but only the work outs can be done. I guess that workout minus good diet = no (or little) results

my age is 26 yrs. i was very thin. with my hard work i gain some fat weight, but due this i also gained my belly fat. i m going to gym doing hard work but still i am unable to loose my belly fat. one thing is more i dont want to loose my other body weight, just belly.

I am a 49 year old male and trying like hell to get in (cliché) ‘The Best Shape of My Life’ before July 4, 2009 as I will be attending my family reunion and want to impress. I don’t consider myself to be in bad shape but just not exactly where I ultimately want to be. I work out on a Bowflex since I do not have free weights and can not afford to join a gym. I live in Wisconsin where we are trying to break out of the LONG winter weather but I also am an avid bicyclist and try to put in 20 miles per day whenever the weather permits and will use my elliptical machine on other days as well as for one minute fast cardio blasts between sets on the Bowflex. I am 6’ tall and weigh 175 – 180 depending on what time of day I weigh myself. Biceps around 15”, chest around 42”, waist around 34”-35”, hips around 40”-41”(?), & thighs around 23”.

I know that you (and Mike Geary) believe in free weights but for now I have what I have. I invested in the Bowflex and the elliptical long before I knew about the two of you and all of your great advice so bear with me as I try to readapt during tough economic times.

A couple of quick questions about your 23-Ways:

1. Referencing #11; can I replace the coffee with either Oolong or Green tea? They are my preferred beverages (along with water).

2. Referencing #20; I usually always have a post workout smoothie consisting of 1 cup water, ½ cup plain yogurt, 30 gram scoop of vanilla whey protein, 1 cup frozen pineapple and (usually but not always) 2 tablespoons of pure raw (local) honey. Because of my office work schedule my evening workout generally has me consuming this smoothie somewhere around 7:00 – 8:00 PM with an intended bedtime of 9:00 PM to get my 8 hours of beauty/recovery sleep; (trust me, I need the beauty sleep as much as I need the recovery sleep. I also generally have 24 raw almonds and a cup of hot chamomile tea JUST before bedtime. Both the smoothie and the almond routines are recommended by Mike Geary who by the way is how I was referred to you. Is this to much before retiring for the evening?

Can you explain how to lose fat at a faster rate,i work night shift all the time,have done for the last 15 years.All eating plans and excerises are based on day jobs for normal people.I get up on Sunday morning at about 08:30, go all day ,then into work for 23:00 that night and don’t get to sleep again until 08:00.Staying asleep is a problem ,about 4-5 hours a day. Love to hear your views on this ……many thanks

Hi Vince, thanks for the most valuable information. I am struggling though to see the six pack on the picture, which all the guys are talking about. I see the pink toe nails, I see the sash on the girl on the left, I see two pairs of shapely legs. Maybe because I am a man I am missing the fricken six pack (LOL) . great picture though, keep up the good work, whenever I speak of Vince Del Monte, my friends think you are my Gym buddy.

Hey Dana I noticed Vince missed your question in regards to increasing the amount of weight training days. Well having used both Vinces muscle and fat loss training guides i know from experience that there are some drastic differences in training on a high and low calorie state. Training to develop muscle mass requires sufficient rest time between training sessions to allow your body to fully recover from a work out. If your eating, training and resting properly then every time you train you are going to be lifting more each work out be it sets/reps/weight. Since it generally takes 48ish hours to recover between work outs you can only realistically fit in 3-4 training sessions a week.

When your training on a low calorie diet to burn fat the aim isn’t so much to build muscle but rather to preserve muscle. Because of this you can actually train more frequently because your body doesn’t need as much recovery time between training sessions. The actual weight training sessions decrease it time. For instance on a muscle building phase vinces work outs go for around 50 mins of full body work, super sets of reverse movements. Whilst a fat loss weight training session takes around 25min to complete and each work out concentrates generally on 2x muscle groups, giant setting a single muscle group. When your eating lower calories your body simply does not have the energy required to lift as heavey as it can or for as long. This why I believe giant sets are used on a single muscle group, to keep intensity high volume is increased instead of weight.

Dan – I don’t have the scientific answer to that right now but I would focus on a more alkaline diet overall.

Alberto and Glenn – I recommend cardio on a empty stomach, many would disagree. I recommend it because it works for me every time. If you try this and you find that you are losing your muscle mass, your body gets the final say and have a meal prior or do it at another time.

You can mix the creatine and bcaa’s with 1 scoop of protein powder if you want some extra protection on your muscle.

Adil – look on the top right hand side of this site. You’ll see links to fat loss meal plans.

Burton – prepare and package as much as possible. You might need to invest into a whole food protein bar to cover at least one of your meals.

Jon – a site can’t calculate your body fat, you need a trainer who has calipers or bio electrical imdedance to measure it for you.

The facts I believe from what I have read is acidic inviroment in the body allows for more muscle growth but is a breading ground for disease instead of an alkaline body inviroment. Vince, from your experience what is best? In addition does the body do best by being acidic during a work out then eating alkaline greens after to clean the cells? I know there has to be an art for optimal performance, advice?

where can i find a ready made diet plan for me as i dont know what to eat so it tells me what to eat such as pasta brocoli them sort of stuff not just have carbs in the morning protein in the evening………. i would like a detailed diet plan do you know any websites.

Hey Vince, First I have to say congrats on making the 200mph Club! I’m an exotic car freak and your experience was awesome to watch! Here is what I’m a little confused about: On point #14 you say be prepared to move from 3 or 4 days of weight training a week to at least 5 days a week. But in your No Nonsense Muscle Building program, if I’m not mistaken, it seems you’re teaching us that you don’t have to work out that often to get great results. Could you please clarify for me what I’m misunderstanding?

Vince, I bought your program to finally get a six-pack; my job as flight attendant is complicated. Especially when you are flying overseas. What do you recommend with eating on schedule, take sufficient rest, training etc , to stay tuned at the program?